Pseudotumor Cerebri Support Group

Pseudotumor cerebri (PTC) is a neurological disorder that is characterized by increased intracranial pressure, in the absence of a tumor or other diseases affecting the brain or its lining. Diagnosis requires brain scans and lumbar puncture. Characteristic symptoms are headache, transient visual obscurations or transient visual loss in one or both eyes usually lasting...

23 year old veteran and athlete and need a shunt

I am a 23 year old female and I've already had two brain surgeries when I was 21. I have chiari malformation and had a decompression done for that in May 2016. They removed part of my occipital scull and the arch of my C1. They cut through my dura and cut part of the herniated cerebellum and shocked it to shrink it back up out of my spinal cavity. About two weeks later my brain started to swell and I had emergency surgery to put a drain in for about eight days and found out I had an infection in my fluid.

I got out of the army later that year in December and started college in January 2017. For about 9 months I felt a lot better and then symptoms started coming back. Flash forward to December 2017 when I met with my new neurosurgeon for the first time. He ordered me a lumbar puncture to test my fluid pressure level and the results came back that my pressure is elevated. He thinks a shunt is something that would truly increase my quality of life.

A little background, I am a veteran and I play lacrosse for my college as I've played lacrosse since I was about 9-years-old. It is something that means a lot to me. My surgeon said I would be able to play lacrosse with a shunt as the hardware and technology has advanced. He said It would be 100% safe and that hes done this surgery on kids who ended up playing football after and went on to live a "normal" life.

I haven't heard a lot of people talk about succes stories of a shunt and I am super scared. I really do not know what I should do. Are there any good stories of shunts? does it always end bad? are they worth it?

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